[avinashv]

This is a beautiful piece about a wonderful, wonderful game. As much as I love Super Metroid (which, despite her criticisms, I think is superior in gameplay and puzzle-platforming), she is spot-on about the ham-fisting of the story.

We should all write like this about video games from our past that made us feel something special.

> Samus’ motives in keeping the last metroid alive are unclear: are they purely utilitarian, or has she had a change of heart? The game’s rules, possibly mirroring Samus’ wishes, don’t allow for the metroid baby to be killed—bullets seem to barely miss or pass through the metroid. Of course, killing the metroid would doom Samus to a slow death deep underground, but this is not immediately apparent.

I didn't ever think about that until just now!

[Retra]

This almost makes Metroid II seem as good as Link's Awakening: The story that asks the player to destroy a whole world despite almost every character in the game telling you how terrible that would be for them. And why? Simply because the game mechanics reward you for it. Kill everything in the name of adventure...

[pyre]

I've beat Link's Awakening several times, and the ending "cinematic" always brought a tear to my eye.

[HCIdivision17]

Ditto. One of her complaints is about the doors in Super Metroid, and I can understand it. Thinking back, I think they may have been going for 'someone's already been here' (which is done masterfully in Uru). But it's so relentless, that it never sets in. Eventually you just gotta blame the goofy space pirates. (In fact, I think this is lampshaded in Metroid Double Prime where the pirate logs make note of how inconvenient the door mechanisms are.)

But especially in the two Primes, it feels contrived. I absolutely adored the two games, but there's a feeling the whole thing is a setup for the character. Too many special circumstances in the ice or rock that somehow awaited Samus showing up at just the right time with the right weapon. The earlier games don't have that, I think, and I can see how Super Metroid starts the trend.

[avinashv]

I've long suspected that Super Metroid is my favorite--and I think this logic applies for many other video game series--because it's not only the first one that I played, but the first one that I beat. I find myself nodding along to every criticism of the game, but there is just something special about that first play through. That incredible sense of simultaneous delight, fear, wonder, confusion, and suspense is still a really vivid memory for me two decades later.

Believe it or not, I have never played any of the Primes.

[HCIdivision17]

Totally understood. I feel that way about the first Prime: I'm slightly embarrassed to say it was the first Metroid game I really played (the original Metroid was just too much for little kid me). But I played it to full completion; it's possibly one of the first things I ever really finished in my life up to that point. I played MP at a friend's house, a couple hours at a time, utterly losing myself in the graphical beauty of the game (dude you can see her gun hand's gesture in X-ray mode!) and the calm exploration music. It was soothing, and I appreciated it a lot. The friend was an older disabled gentleman who kept his home open for the neighborhood kids to have a safe place to hang out; I knew him from church and wasn't a part of any real social group, but he thought I might enjoy it. And so I rode my bike over and played and left in the cool evening. Often he'd be tidying up his Animal Crossing dailies before or after.

I wish I was as eloquent as the OP in describing the experience, since I would love to have that feeling again. Oh well.

The circumstances of a good game well played can burn in and amplify the experience. So I consider myself lucky, since quite few games feel that much deeper given the state of my life while playing them. I can see and agree with all sorts of flaws in the games, but they'll remain special simply because at the time, they were.

[avinashv]

> I can see and agree with all sorts of flaws in the games, but they'll remain special simply because at the time, they were.

I don't really have much to add to that, except that this is a really succinct way of describing, I think, what you, the author, and I are trying to say.

[cheald]

If you have a Wii u, all three are on sale for $10 in the EStore. They're great games, though I can't say the wiimote control scheme holds up.

[avinashv]

I don't own a Wii U and I don't unfortunately have any plans to get one. That sale is popping up all over the Internet though, so I guess this is the first time it's been offered on the Wii U as a bundle?

[jcurbo]

Metroid Prime Trilogy had a limited run and this is the first time it's been offered digitally. It's also one of the first three Wii games released on the Wii U that don't require you to go into Wii Mode first to play. (basically, booting up a virtual Wii inside of which you launch your game)

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/29/7946129/metroid-prime-trilo...

[JonnieCache]

It's less fun with the wiimote that with the original GCN controller IMO.

[derefr]

I do wonder if the doors—at least at first—were more supposed to be metaphor than prop; given that you have to blast them open, perhaps they were just an indication of passibility to the player, where Samus would just see rubble or rock walls or rust-frozen mechanisms needed to be blast-cleaned, etc. One visual symbol standing in for many scenarios.

[fixermark]

They're a necessity.

The original Metroid needed them for expensive loading transitions between areas, as palettes and the scroll buffer were swapped out. Interestingly, they also serve that purpose in Prime... If you've ever shot a door and had it change color to show it unlatched but refuse to open for several seconds, that's the console stalling on loading the area behind the door.